


To Understand and be Understood

by colazitron



Series: 2018 December Holiday Fic Countdown [8]
Category: SKAM (Norway)
Genre: Character Study, F/F, Friendship, Future Fic, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-12-08
Updated: 2018-12-08
Packaged: 2019-09-14 11:59:14
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,814
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16912473
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/colazitron/pseuds/colazitron
Summary: A look at some moments in Vilde and Chris' friendship.





	To Understand and be Understood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [champagneleftie](https://archiveofourown.org/users/champagneleftie/gifts).



> **Disclaimer:** I am in no way affiliated with the characters depicted herein or their creators. I made all of this up. I am sharing it for fun.
> 
> **A/N:** this is for Champagne, who wanted a brief history of Chris and Vilde's friendship - I hope I did your idea justice, babe!

**001.**

“Hi, I'm Vilde,” Vilde says, sitting down next to the brunette girl with the two braided pigtails. They're a lot longer than Vilde's hair, because Vilde recently caught headlice from her cut and her mum had to cut it all off when shampooing her hair with the special anti headlice shampoo again and again and again wouldn't work.

Vilde cried over it. She's not proud to say it but her hair was so long before! A proper princess length. She does think she's entitled to a little cry.

And now it's cropped into a very short bob and it's the first day of the school year and she wanted to make a good impression! Sure, she's known all of these people for years now, but still! She practiced braiding and how to do her make-up over the summer but now her hair is just short and dumb.

“Are you new?” Vilde asks.

The brunette smiles at her, big and toothy and full of open excitement.

“Yeah, I am! We moved and it was a hassle to have to go all the way across town for school, so my parents enrolled me here. It's a bit shit because I don't really know anyone yet, but I'm sure it'll be fine,” she says. “Right, I'm Chris by the way. Christina, but really everyone calls me Chris.”

“Are you sure?” Vilde asks. “I mean, everyone at your old school might have called you that, but you could just be Christina here. It's a pretty name.”

Chris-Christina laughs.

“No, it's dreadful. You don't have to pretend like it isn't. I like Chris better anyway. I'm much more of a Chris, don't you think?” she asks, striking a pose like she's flexing her arms, tilting her head at an angle to stare off into the distance.

Yes, she probably is more of a Chris, Vilde decides, with her snapback and her bomber jacket and her graphic t-shirt underneath.

“Okay,” Vilde says. “Chris then. I'm Vilde.”

She holds out her hand, and Chris grabs it enthusiastically and laughs.

“Yes, you said that already.”

“Oh,” Vilde says, and blushes. “Right.”

 

**002.**

“I'm never going to get it. I give up,” Chris groans, dropping her pen down onto her notebook and leaning back in her chair, covering her face with her arms. It makes her shirt rise up a bit and show some of her belly, but she doesn't seem to care.

It's not that Vilde doesn't think that Chris is a pretty girl, because she is. She has a sweet face and her clothes are always amazing, if you like that sort of thing. But Vilde always catches herself looking at Chris' belly in moments like this and wondering how she does it. How she just doesn't seem to care. How she eats crisps and drinks chocolate milkshakes at school seemingly without even noticing that people are staring.

Admittedly, not many people.

Mostly only Malin and Thea, and they're awful, mean girls anyway.

But still. Vilde always feels herself shrink under their gazes, when they look at her, at her cardigans or skirts or hair or jewellery and then turn to each other and start to giggle just as they walk away. She doesn't understand how Chris doesn't seem to care.

But anyway, that's not the point.

“Of course you're going to get it,” she says. “It's just a poem. It can't possibly be more difficult than teaching me how to drive a skateboard.”

Chris lowers her arms and shoots Vilde an incredulous look.

“You don't _drive_ a skateboard. You ride it.”

“And you don't read a poem. You experience it,” Vilde says primly and then taps one pink-nailed fingertip onto the textbook in front of Chris' notebook. “Listen –

_The hillsides and the fields at home are covered_  
_with snow this Christmas as they use to be._  
_My Christmas, though, is rolling through the darkness_  
_towards me and approaching steadily._ ”

 

**003.**

“I don't like Sana, Chris,” Vilde says, quietly. “I don't want her to be part of our bus.”

Chris sighs deeply and rolls her eyes when Vilde looks over at her. They've been fighting more and more ever since they started at Nissen. Vilde thought it would be so great, to go to the same upper secondary school, get a chance to start over new, make the right friends right away.

And it had been going so well too, until Ingrid and Sara decided to kick her off the bus because they didn't have room. Right. Sure. Vilde's sure it's because they don't like her. She's always a little too intense, a little too odd. She tries to hard, some people have told her.

Chris has told her.

“You just need to give her a chance, Vilde,” Chris says now. “She's really awesome.”

“She's mean,” Vilde protests.

Chris pulls a grimace.

“Maybe a little, sometimes, but only when people deserve it.”

Vilde reels back and stares at her in shock.

“So I deserved it?” she asks, heart racing in her chest and throat going tight.

“That's not what I meant,” Chris says and reaches over to lay a hand on Vilde's arm. “Vilde. I don't mean that you're a bad person or anything. Just… what you said was a little insensitive, okay? And I'm sure Sana has to deal with that kind of shit all the time, so maybe she just said something that was funny and a little mean in response because she was annoyed, okay?”

“Well, she could have just told me normally,” Vilde grumbles. “I was just trying to be courteous.”

“I know,” Chris says with a small sigh. “You don't always have to try so hard, Vilde.”

_There it is._

“Just give her a chance, okay?” Chris asks. “Noora and Eva seem to like her.”

Vilde rolls her eyes and fidgets in her seat.

Noora and Eva do seem to like Sana. And they're nice. They're also both so pretty, and if Vilde can't be in the bus with the coolest girls, then she would really like to be on a bus with pretty girls. They'll still get invited to all the cool parties if they're pretty; it won't matter that their bus is just five losers.

“Okay,” she concedes.

 

**004.**

“I can't believe we made it,” Chris says, staring out over the park.

They're sitting on a bench, side by side, eating ice cream cones.

Today was their last day of school. Now it's goodbye Nissen, goodbye classrooms, goodbye school schedules, goodbye homework. At least for now. Chris is going to go travelling, and Vilde has decided she's going to take her up on her offer to go with her.

She was going to go straight into university, signed up for the psychology course and everything, but she's deferred for a year. The closer summer came the more she felt that pull right under her breastbone, calling her away away away. Anywhere so long as it's not Oslo, so long as it's not the same cafés and shops and street corners and people over and over.

Of course she loves her friends, and her mum. And she's going to miss them. And she doesn't think she would have gone by herself, but with Chris by her side the idea of seeing more of the world, of getting to experience things she has never seen, heard, tasted, felt, smelled before… it's exhilarating.

They're meeting the others in a bit for a large barbecue in Eva's backyard, but for now it's just the two of them, watching kids splash around the duckpond in the park. Technically they're not supposed to do that, but no one's telling them not to.

That's kind of how Vilde feels. Like she's not supposed to take that year off. She's not supposed to leave her mother alone for a year. She's not supposed to not head straight for her goals.

But no one's telling her not to. So she's just going to do it anyway.

 

**005.**

Chris has tears in her eyes. Mum does too. If she's not careful, so will Vilde, and then all the hard work Noora put into her makeup will have been for nothing.

Noora squeezes her hand tightly.

“We'll wait outside, yeah? Give you two a moment,” she says, and when Vilde nods, she takes her mother by the arm gently and leads her outside.

Chris flaps her hands uselessly in front of her face like she's trying to dry her eyes and Vilde laughs.

“God, look at you,” Chris finally says, grabbing hold of Vilde's arms and looking her over.

Vilde feels herself blush.

She feels like a princess. The dress is perfect; white lace and floating around her almost ethereally when she moves. The tiara and veil sit exactly right on her loosely curled hair. Noora did perfect with her makeup – light and fresh, making her look like she's glowing. The flowers of her bouquet are the softest blush pink.

“You look like a princess,” Chris says.

Vilde laughs again, a little wetly, and then she's flapping her hands in front of her face as well and Chris springs into action, grabbing a tissue from the vanity table to hand to Vilde so she can dab at her eyes.

“Crisis averted,” Chris grins when she takes the tissue back and tosses it out for Vilde.

“Thank god,” Vilde laughs.

“Can you believe this is happening?” Chris asks then, quite and in awe as she looks Vilde over.

Vilde thinks about Karoline, and feels her cheeks heat up.

She can't quiet believe it, but at the same time this feels more right than most other things Vilde's done in her life.

“Yeah,” she says. “It's mad, isn't it? But it's perfect. I don't want to be anywhere else.”

Chris tears up again and pulls Vilde into a hug.

“And I wouldn't want anyone else here with me either,” Vilde goes on. “I couldn't imagine anyone but you.”

“You're gonna make me cry,” Chris complains, voice wet and shot through with emotion.

Vilde laughs.

“You're already crying!”

Chris laughs too and then pulls away to blow her nose and blot at her own face.

“Well, just wait until after. I've written a toast that is going to make you cry too,” she warns. “And I'm talking full-on bawling. Ugly fat tears and snot everywhere.”

Vilde grabs Chris' hands and squeezes them tightly.

“I wouldn't want anything less,” she says.

Chris' eyes water again and she looks up and blinks quickly.

“God, stop it! I don't have a personal makeup artist here today!”

Vilde hands her another tissue and then grabs her bouquet. She looks in the mirror one last time, top to bottom, tiara to heels, pink lips beaming, her curled bob bouncing, eyes shining brightly.

Today is going to be perfect.

Then she grabs Chris' hand and they walk over to the door.

 

**The End**

**Author's Note:**

> The poem is the first stanza of _An Evening In Verona_ by Tarjei Vesaas, taken from [here](https://www.poemhunter.com/poem/an-evening-in-verona-by-tarjei-vesaas-translated/).


End file.
